North Yorkshire Council chiefs will be asked to agree £60m of funding for five new care and support hubs to replace the authority’s crumbling stock of elderly people’s homes.
The new hubs would provide residential care for 250 older people with complex care needs due to dementia.
The new facilities would eventually replace the authority’s seven elderly people’s homes, which officers say all need significant investment to continue operating safely.
They would also help the authority save money by cutting its spending on places at privately-run care homes.
Richard Webb, corporate director for health and adult services (HAS), described the plans in a report to councillors as “an ambitious re-design of the council’s care provision”.
Mr Webb said the new hubs could be built within five years, with the savings they delivered potentially covering the cost of the expenditure within four years of their opening.
He added:
“It is an invest to save proposal estimated to reduce future costs of up to £14.8m per annum in the HAS budget, once the full programme has been implemented and depending on prevailing market conditions.”
The hubs would offer specialist residential dementia care in purpose-built settings which would meet the needs of people with advanced dementia and other specialist needs.
Council officers say the hubs would significantly reduce the requirement for one-to-one support and reduce the reliance on expensive specialist provision in the independent care market.
They would also provide care for people released from hospital and in need of bed-based help, with specialist reablement and rehabilitation support available.
The hubs would be built at locations around the county to meet demand, with the first opened in the Harrogate and Scarborough areas.
They would be designed, constructed and owned by the council through the authority’s strategic property service.
The care and support hubs are being proposed against a backdrop of North Yorkshire’s rapidly ageing population.
Figures show people aged 65 and over made up 25.7 per cent of the county’s population in 2023, compared with 18.7 per cent for England.
This is projected to increase to 33 per cent by 2043, meaning an additional 54,142 people.
The Alzheimer’s Society estimated in 2021 that there were 9,272 people aged over 65 living with dementia in North Yorkshire.
By 2030, this was projected to increase to 15,002 people, 9,617 of whom would have severe dementia and be more likely to require long-term social care services.
While the services will mainly support older people, they will be able to help working-age adults, particularly those with early-onset dementia.
The council says nearly £900,000 was spent last year on servicing and maintenance at its existing elderly people’s homes in Bedale, Filey, Harrogate, Pickering, Selby, Skipton and Pickering.
The council has calculated that almost £10m would be required over the next five years to maintain safe standards at the seven homes, which were mainly built in the 1970s.
The care and support hubs proposal will be discussed by members of North Yorkshire Council’s executive committee on Tuesday, January 7.
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